Abstract
we designed a central venous catheter with a newly developed diaphragm pressure transducer (CVPS) which is capable of measuring central venous pressure (CVP) directly, and compared CVP measured by the conventional method to that measured by a CVPS catheter in 13 patients. The CVPS catheter was inserted via the right internal jugular vein. The zero level was determined by moving the transducer until the reading agreed with the reading of the CVPS catheter. The anteroposterior distance of the chest cage (A cm) and the distance to the zero level from the posterior chest wall (B cm) were measured. The wave form and value measured by the CVPS catheter almost agreed with those measured by the conventional method. The values of B/A was 0.51±0.10 (mean±SD, n=13). This value is almost the same as the midpoint of the anteroposterior distance of the chest cage or the midaxillary line.
